American Legacies Organization, Inc.

By Joan Grimes Kowalski

She is part of my very first memory

There were so many things she could do.

The best thing of all was that she’d let me help

And find time to talk to me, too.

I’ve helped her hang paper, upholster a chair,

Garden, clean, cook, can and bake.

She made glass wind chimes, and how she could sew!

One bright morning a couple of leery-eyed young airmen knocked on the door of my room to complain they’d found bedbugs in their bunks and considered it a profane intrusion. I concurred and checked the rest of the rooms. Indeed there were bed bugs in some and whether they were imported from a G.I.s occasional trips south of the border for rest and relaxation diversions, or home grown, we couldn’t determine.

For all of us who are 50 or older — even those of you younger than 50 will appreciate the following:

No nursing home for me. I am checking into the Holiday Inn! With the average cost for a nursing home per day reaching $188.00, there is a better way when we get old & feeble.

I have already checked on reservations at the Holiday Inn. For a combined long term stay discount and senior discount, it's $49.23 per night. That leaves $138.77 a day for: Breakfast, lunch and dinner in any restaurant I want, or room service. Laundry, gratuities and special TV movies.

No one can imagine how much damage air raids cause, until they actually see the result. When you see a place that has been leveled for blocks and blocks, you begin to realize what it must have been like. At that point, when we reached Kure, I could see why the Japanese surrendered. We were only twenty miles from where the atomic bomb hit.

By Staci Norton

The Story... As far back as I know, begins in Deutschland.

Billy was goofing off talking to his corporal friend in the company office and in walks a tall handsome officer, a picture of sartorial elegance with his splendid uniform and leather accessories. A stunning private ATS girl, whose natural attributes would be apparent covered in a potato sack, followed him. You might say that they looked like Barbie and Ken, because that's what they did look like and they deserve those names for the rest of the story.

By: Joe Mayfield

When looking back to the 50 and 60’s, we now see how much better times really were. Take Dirt Roads as an example; yes they were dusty in the summer, and muddy in the winter, not to mention the holes that sometimes seemed to be the start of the second Grand Canyon.

By Linda Clark

This past Monday, my very dear, close friend, who is like a dear sister to me, called me and said that her husband had passed away from a stroke. This was a shock as I had a recent phone call of her dying of cancer. Anyway, we got to talking about the old days over the phone. She needed someone to talk to.

By Pat Collins

February 26, 1893

Birmingham, Alabama

The Birth

It was a cold day in February, 1893. Martha Jane Collins had started her labor early in the morning hours, but she still had plenty to do. She had to get in the wood and kindling to get a fire started, get the children up and dressed for school, feed them, fix their lunches and get them off to school. With some luck-she might be able to get all this done before the baby came.

By Heather Hartley

The Mill Creek Zanja

The Mill Creek Zanja, probably best known today as the creek running through the University of Redlands campus and Sylvan Park, is the main reason Redlands has flourished over the years.